Treasure at bottom of AIIM sea

by Lee Velker of KMWorld Magazine

At AIIM’99, deep sea explorer Paul Tidwell, president and CEO of Cape Verde Explorations, presented a program on how his company put imaging technology to use in finding a WWII Japanese submarine. The submarine, I-52, was sunk while on a mission to exchange scientists, opium and gold with the Nazis. When attacked in 1944, I-52 was installing the latest in radar detection technology from Germany and was sunk by the latest in U.S. Navy technology, radar and a sonar-guided torpedo. Tidwell made the statement that in efficiently locating the wreck-the deepest ever found at 17,300 feet-he too needed the latest in today’s technology.

That included new sonar technology and the MIR submersibles used in locating the Titanic. However, it went beyond that to the world of imaging. Hewlett-Packard, in conjunction with Filemark and KOM, helped Tidwell and crew manage about 12,000 photographic images. They leveraged the technology for numerous gains-such as profitable National Geographic and IMAX film deals-but also to do analysis, information gathering and planning for salvage operations.

Leveraging those images through the image file management tools will help shape salvaging operations.

The system Tidwell felt he needed had to be quickly assembled and able to function on ship. That way if the crew missed any images at sea, they could do something about it immediately.

Source: KMWorld Magazine